


blood and flesh

by togglemaps



Series: the price of survival [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Homophobia, Anal Sex, Angst, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Physical Abuse, Ramsay is His Own Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togglemaps/pseuds/togglemaps
Summary: Everybody knew that the king would marry the Greyjoy boy if he could. (Limited/No Homophobia AU)





	blood and flesh

**Author's Note:**

> This was not supposed to be anywhere near as long as it turned out, but that is the story of my life. 
> 
> No idea about the tags for this, if you think there's something I haven't tagged for please let me know. If you'd like to know specifics, I'll describe them in the end notes.

It was a fact of the world that oldest sons couldn’t marry for love.

Robb was eleven when he was first told this, after he informed his mother he was going to marry Theon as soon as they were old enough. She’d frowned and shaken her head and interrupted him before he could go on to describe the wedding feast in minute detail. “You won’t marry Theon, sweet boy,” she said. “You’ll marry a highborn lady who will give you heirs and so will he. You’re heir to Winterfell, as he is to the Iron Islands. Others may marry who they like; you may not.” She said the last bit gently, but had then went on to say that Theon wouldn’t be a good boy to marry anyway, that he was strange and arrogant and the Greyjoys and all Ironborn weren’t to be trusted. “They’re a brutal people,” she warned. “And duplicitous by nature.”

At the time, Robb hadn’t even been certain what duplicitous meant and had brushed the advice aside. She said the same things about Jon and bastards, about highborn sons and lowborn ones, about Targaryens and Bloodfyres, and Robb had always known she was wrong about that. She misjudged Jon when she said such things and it was the same with Theon. His mother had been certain of who Theon was before he ever stepped foot inside Winterfell. Theon had been quiet and withdrawn when he first arrived, watching them all silently from behind long hair that did what it could to hide him from them. By twelve, Theon had learnt that quiet made these strange Northmen suspicious, made them think him sly and cunning and in need of a beating, and so he smiled and made jokes that grew sharper the older he grew.

No one in all the world knew Theon as Robb did. Robb had been sneaking into Theon’s bed since they were boys, shared conversations that lasted late into the night, and Robb’s eye had always drawn to him. Everybody in Winterfell seemed so much the same, except for Theon.

“We must try to gentle him,” Robb had heard Maester Luwin say to his father once. “His people are savages and we must do all we can to ensure he is not.”

It seemed a strange thing to Robb even then, that they would try to gentle the heir to the Iron Islands and then, one day, send him back there to rule. If they were such savages, how could he survive if they succeeded? The thought wouldn’t leave him for days afterwards, worry turning his stomach hard and heavy. Would they hurt Theon, even kill him? Wouldn’t his family protect him, as Robb’s family would have for one of their own? Theon’s parents loved him, surely, and his sister too. Theon had terrifying stories to tell of his uncles, would they come to his defence if it came to that?

When they were both 15, he kissed Theon while they soaked in the hot springs in the weirwood. They kissed for a long time, Theon gentle and teasing and encouraging. Robb had never kissed anyone before, always shied away from it for reasons he couldn’t have explained until he looked at Theon in the hot spring and wanted to kiss him so much that he realised he’d been wanting it longer than he could have said. He took Theon as a lover only a week after that, hot and eager and quick to learn. They weren’t subtle, kissing in dark corners of the castle, in the stables, once caught at the top of one of the towers with Theon on his knees. They sat together at meals, thighs pressed together beneath the table, elbows knocking against each other as they ate.

They received an angry raven from Balon Greyjoy when Theon was almost 17, one of only a few they ever received all the years Theon was a ward there. Separate them, Balon demanded. He would not have his son take a Northman as a lover.

It took all of a week for Theon to defy his father, he and Robb tumbling back into bed after they and Jon had consumed most of a flask of Dornish wine they’d stolen from the kitchens. They were boys still, and they were in love. Balon Greyjoy could have no more changed that than he could have changed the tides, or brought his older sons back from the dead.

When Robb marched to war, he took Theon with him, laid with him at night and ignored the advice of the people who tried to convince him that Theon was a poor choice of lover during the day. Several of the lords—the Greatjon, Rickard Karstark, Jason Mallister—pushed their own sons as betters choices, none of whom seemed pleased by their fathers advances on their behalf.

“He has eyes only for the Kraken,” the Smalljon hissed at his father. They stood just outside Robb’s tent, where Robb and Theon were sprawled out over the bed, trying not to laugh and only half dressed as they eavesdropped.

“The direwolf doesn’t lay with a squid, boy. You’re a better choice. He will see.”

The Smalljon had stormed away, but the Greatjon continued to thrust his son at Robb at every opportunity. At least the Smalljon was good company and more interested in ale and off colour jokes than attempting to lure Robb to his bed, which couldn’t be said for all those thrust at him.

If his father weren’t dead and his sisters held captive by the Lannisters, the situation would be far more amusing than it was. If only it had happened when they were all still at Winterfell, Robb would have felt able to laugh more freely. Even things that were light and amusing had unwanted heft now.

And then the Ironborn attacked the North.

Robb sat at his table of war, all his bannermen save Lord Bolton sitting around the table as he read the raven from Moat Cailin. It had been sent to Riverrun and then on to the camp by horse. “I’m not going to take his head,” he said, perhaps a tad harshly. 

“Yes, your grace,” the Greatjon said. “We know.”

“He’s fought with us, he—what?”

Theon, sitting several places to Robb’s right, was smiling, because of course he fucking was. “I shouldn’t want to laugh, but I do.” Though he was far paler than normal, his voice remained mild and even a little amused. Perhaps no one else would notice that he was at all bothered—that would have been Theon’s preference.

“Oh be quiet,” Robb snapped, and Theon raised both his hands in surrender before they fell back down onto the table.

“We don’t all know that, Umber. You _should_ take his head,” Lord Karstark said. “Balon Greyjoy knew it would cost his son his life when he rebelled a second time.”

It was so nice to know that even when the leech lord was absent, there was someone to advocate for the most cold-hearted option.

Grey Wind growled and Theon reached down to pat him soothingly and the beast settled himself at Theon’s side. The wolf had been lying underneath the table with his head on Theon’s feet, but now he sat upright, his impressive height and girth a silent threat. His eyes were fixed on Lord Karstark and Robb was fairly certain that if Grey Wind could have placed himself directly between Theon and the other man he would have.

Robb very much understood the impulse.

A few of the lords looked askance at Karstark, but the Greatjon only rolled his eyes. “If this were some secret liaison I’d say go ahead, but it isn’t. People won’t look at Greyjoy dead as justice, they’ll look on it as savage. A man killing his lover for something the man didn’t even do. The men will see their own shield brothers, their husbands, their wives. You think this will save us trouble, Karstark? It won’t.”

Karstark opened his mouth, face red with anger, but fell silent when Robb raised his hand. “Leave us, please,” Robb said, pushing himself away from the table. Except for Theon, they all quickly left the tent, Karstark throwing a hateful look at Theon as he went.

It didn’t seem any of the other lords had agreed with Lord Karstark, which was something at least—though he had little doubt that if Lord Bolton were here, he’d be saying the same thing as Rickard Karstark. The Greatjon had spoken in support of not executing Theon and the Manderly cousin who spoke for his family seemed entirely uninterested in the whole thing. The Manderly’s had little to fear from the Ironborn; White Harbor was on the western coast and it wasn’t likely the Ironborn would get much further west than Moat Cailin. Nobody doubted they could drive the Ironborn from their homes, as they were men who lived off the eastern coast of Westeros, closer to the Riverlands than the North. The Ironborn had never known a true winter, but it would come for them just as it did for everybody else.

It was the height of foolishness to try and occupy the North. They would learn that in time.

Theon rose to his feet, walking over to their bed and sitting down. Grey Wind followed so close that it was only the wolf’s quick reflexes that stopped him from catching the back of one of Theon’s heels more than once. Theon scratched Grey Wind behind his ears and then ran the back of his hand down his snout. “You have to send me back to Riverrun in chains, and that’s only if you don’t take my head,” Theon murmured, his voice barely audible.  

“I don’t want to send you away at all. I didn’t send you to Pyke to treat with your father because I didn’t want us to be separated. This doesn’t change that.”

“I’m neither an idiot, nor a fool,” Theon said, his voice far sharper than Robb had ever heard it. Even that day in the woods with Bran and the wildlings, his voice hadn’t had anything like the edge it had now, like it was ripping itself out of his throat with all the violence of a drawn blade. “You kept me here for far better reasons than because you can’t draw breath when we aren’t within shouting distance of each other.”

Robb rolled his eyes. “Yes, I remember the raven. It said something like ‘you allowing my son to lay with the heir of the North is tantamount to him and you pissing on the bones of my dead sons’, didn’t it?” Robb smiled at Theon, who reluctantly returned it, though it looked so little like his regular one that Robb wanted to make some wonderful joke that would make Theon truly smile. He’d often wished he had something like Theon’s quick wit, but never so much as now. “I wasn’t sure sending you to treat with him would come off the way I’d have liked.”

Theon held up both his arms, his hands limp, and said, “Put me in shackles and send me back to Riverrun. It’s your best option. I agree with the Greatjon, taking the head of a man everybody knows to be your lover won’t look good, even when it’s a man everybody dislikes. Or maybe I think that because I don’t want to lose my head. Even if that’s true, please leave my head where it is, I rather like it being attached to my body.” He smirked just a little as he said the last bit.

“I’m not having you ride back to Riverrun in shackles.” The very idea made his stomach clench almost as much as it had when he read the raven from the North, made bile rise in the back of his throat, bitter and vile and the taste lingering long after he’d swallowed it back down. Who did he trust enough to leave Theon in their care when he was so vulnerable? Jon, maybe, but that was a pointless thought. Jon was at the Wall, out of reach for such things forever for reasons far more permanent than simple distance.

Theon rolled his eyes, hands dropping back to his lap. “Then put me in shackles and have them take them off five minutes down the road. It can’t look like you’re just slapping me on the wrist. It’s your smallfolk my family has attacked, not to mention the families of your bannermen.”

“Why aren’t you more upset?” Robb demanded.

Theon shrugged. “I am upset.”

“You don’t look it.”

For a moment, his face turned hard, like it did just before a battle. Robb wondered if his own face did the same thing, if battle tore away the last vestiges of youthfulness from his face and made it seem he was a man unmoved by entreaty or by the blood that kept appearing underneath his fingernails no matter how thoroughly he scrubbed. 

He was good at this, good at war, they both were. 

Robb understood war. He hadn’t thought he would, hadn’t though it was the sort of thing one could understand.

Maybe it was only battle he understood, the complexities of strategy and position and always, always being where someone didn’t expect you to be, where they didn’t think it was possible for you to be. He kept trying to turn his head to the politics of the thing, but that didn’t come as easily and he had been taught so much about war and so little about politics. Why had Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik and his father taught him so much about the ways of battle and so little about the ways of war?

“It is what it is,” Theon said. “If my father’s chosen to forfeit my life or if he’s relying on my being your lover to save it, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and all I know for sure is that you’re all I have in the entire world.” He smiled then, and it was a bitter and horrible thing. “How often have I said ‘one day I shall be Lord of the Iron Islands’? Too often. I think I knew. I think I’ve always known.”

Whatever he had expected Theon to say, it wasn’t that. Always known what? That his father wouldn’t have him as his heir? That he wouldn’t ever be Lord of the Iron Islands? Robb had thought he knew everything there was to know about Theon Greyjoy, but he’d been wrong. What had taught Theon such things? It had to be before he had ever come to Winterfell, surely. Had Theon hidden these things inside himself, locked up so tightly that until now he hadn’t had to look them in the face?

Robb reached out to cup Theon’s cheek in his palm and Theon flinched away. Robb dropped his hand and said softly, “I’m sorry.”

“Send me back to Riverrun and be done with it. When you’ve won this war we can go back to Winterfell and your Frey wife can learn to hate me for spending more nights in your bed than she does. Perhaps they’ll come up with some terribly clever name for me. ‘The Concubine in the North’. Or whore, maybe, if they particularly hate me. It’ll be wonderful.”

Robb sat beside him and pulled him close, Theon’s head burying into his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Robb whispered again, after he’d pressed a kiss into Theon’s hair. He loved this man more than he loved his own life, but duty cared nothing for love and would keep Robb from having Theon as he wished. He would marry some nameless, faceless Frey and do all he could to love her, respect her, to not resent her. He would have a Queen, not a Prince Consort; a lover, not a husband.

“Promise me something,” Theon said, when he finally pulled away. His face and eyes were dry, but that seemed more a feat of strength on Theon’s part than anything else, as his whole body was drawn tight with anguish. His back and shoulders were rounded, still leaning towards Robb as though pulling away had been more effort than he could bear.

“Anything,” Robb said. If Theon said ‘marry me’, or ‘run away to the Free Cities with me’ or ‘give me your crown’, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, say no. Anything to take the look of despair off Theon’s face, anything to take some of the burden onto himself and off the man he loved.

“A bold statement.”

“And a true one. Ask.”

Theon let out a breath that was almost a laugh and said, “Take me to the sea one day, when this is all over. Make love to me in the water. And make sure they send me back to the sea when I die. I’ll stay with you until then, but do this for me. Plea—”

Robb placed a hand over Theon’s mouth. “Don’t beg, Theon. You never have to beg me for anything.”

Theon cocked an eyebrow and Robb could feel the smirk against his hand.

“Fine,” Robb said, amused. “You never have to beg me for anything outside our bed.” He smiled. “All those things we can do. I’m looking forward to making love in the sea. You do know how cold the water is in the North though, even in the summer,” he teased, as gently as he knew how, his hand dropping down into his lap.

“Then take me to Dorne. What’s the point in being lover to a king if he doesn’t take you somewhere it’s warm enough to make love in the sea, at least once?”

Robb laughed. “That’s true. We’ll do those things together, when this war is over.” He ran his hands up and down Theon’s arms. “I’ll arrange for an escort to Riverrun in the morning. I’ll make sure they take off the shackles when you’re...five minutes down the road.” He rolled his eyes as he said it.

“Good. I was going to argue with you if you didn’t agree to the shackles.”

“Shackles. Of course. I’ve heard they’re the newest fashion. Who wouldn’t want to wear them?”

“All the most fashionable lords and ladies will be wearing them for years to come and it all started here.”

“We’re trendsetters.”

“We are.”

Robb smiled, small and hopeful. “I love you.”

“That I know. That I’m certain of.”

“Good. I’m glad. I would have argued with you if you didn’t.”

Theon chuckled and flopped down onto their bed.

 

The Smalljon volunteered to take Theon to Riverrun. He was solemn and fierce when he said, “I’ll get him there safe, Your Grace, and I’ll make sure your uncle knows that he must be kind to your Kraken or else risk angering his king.” The Smalljon grinned then, wide and puckish. It was the sort of smile that made you smile back just as wide, just as full of mischief.

Even this afternoon it made Robb smile back, as he arranged to send away the only thing in all the world that belonged to Robb himself alone; not Robb Stark, Lord of Winterfell, or Robb Stark, the first of his name, the King in the North. “My uncle knows what Theon is to me.” Robb tilted his head right back so he could look the Smalljon in the face, even though they were standing so close that it left a crick in his neck. “I think he does anyway. I’ll send a letter with you, just to make sure.”

After, Robb lingered just inside the entrance of his tent. Theon was sleeping in their bed, napping under a pile of furs. He was on his side, back to the tent opening, Grey Wind curled up beside him. The direwolf had gotten so big that, pressed as close to Theon as he could manage, he still took up most of the space on the bed, even though some of his massive body was hanging off and Theon had been pushed right to the edge of the mattress.

He could only stare, a lump in his throat. Theon fast asleep with Grey Wind at his back would be a sight he would miss, knowing that Theon felt safe enough with the direwolf to sleep pressed up against him. Would miss getting up in the morning and having Theon roll over to where Robb had been laying and fall back asleep for another hour while Robb walked the camp or ate breakfast.

 _The war will be over soon,_ he told himself. He could go back to Winterfell and take Theon with him. He would be with his sisters and his brothers and his mother in their home and they could put their father's bones to rest in the crypts below Winterfell with his brother and his sister. Maybe Robb’s Frey wife would hate Theon or maybe she wouldn’t, but he would have Theon with him either way, could wake up with him most mornings, go hunting with him, force Theon to help with Robb with his kingly duties. If there was one positive to Theon’s family being what they were, it was that he and Theon could grow old together at Winterfell when this was all over. It was a future Theon had paid a high price for, but Robb was selfishly, privately pleased by it.

Sweet as that imagined future was, he knew it was wrong to feel that way, that if he were a better man he’d feel differently, but he could see it just beyond the horizon and it gave him some comfort, a reason to fight as hard as he could that he need share with no one.

He sat beside Theon on the bed, brushing some hair back from Theon’s forehead. Both of them had let their hair grow too long as the war marched on, but Theon’s straight hair showed it more. Mostly, Robb’s hair just started to look more and more wild.

Theon’s eyes opened, flicking from him to Grey Wind’s head where it now rested on Theon’s hip. “The two of you are a strange thing to wake up to.”

“And you’ve been doing it for months and months. What does that say about you?”

He smiled. “That I can get used to anything, including a direwolf and his human staring down at me every morning, always with the same expression.”

“Grey Wind is a direwolf, I’m fairly certain he doesn’t have expressions.”

“You’d think so, yes, but he does. For instance, he currently looks sad. Forlorn, you might say. Rather like you do right now, even though I’m the one being sent away.”

“I’m going to miss you,” Robb said softly, then pressed a kiss to Theon’s shoulder.

“Apparently everyone knows that, including all your bannermen. It’s a strange day when Rickard Karstark is the only one arguing for you to take my head when that’s what’s expected.”

“True. I’m glad of it nonetheless. I thought you should know that the Smalljon volunteered to escort you to Riverrun. He assures me he’s going to take it very seriously.”

“I’m suitably reassured.”

“And it isn’t like you’ll be missing much here anyway. Every battle seems the same after awhile.” Robb couldn’t make himself sound anything except annoyed and sad and completely unconvincing.

Theon shot him an incredulous look. “Really? That’s what you’re going to try and convince me of? That’s the angle you’re choosing?”

Robb went red, something he knew was a deeply unflattering look on him. It was just too much red going on all in one place. “Can you think of a better one?” he asked, sheepish, but somehow lighter than before anyway.

“It’s good you’ll be out of danger, I worry about you soooo much?” Theon smiled and fluttered his eyelashes.

Robb laughed. “I think you’d have punched me if I’d tried that one.”

Theon sat up, Grey Wind falling from his place against Theon’s hip. He leaned in close to Robb, smiling. “Possibly. Still better than ‘war is boring’.”

“Maybe,” Robb breathed, almost directly into Theon’s mouth, where it hovered just over his, smiling in that way that Theon had that always stole the breath from Robb’s lungs. Grey Wind slipped out of the tent to sit outside, the way he always did when Robb and Theon made love.

Robb kissed him, hard and wet and not enough. Theon was leaving in the morning—it couldn’t possibly be enough. Theon ended up half in Robb’s lap, straddling one of his thighs and his hands clutching tightly at Robb’s curls.

Robb wrapped his arms around Theon’s waist as tightly as he could. “I love you, I love you,” Robb said, pressing kisses along Theon’s jaw. There was a dreadful desperation to it, something in him that feared this would be the last time. That he would watch Theon disappear from view and never see him again.

Theon wrapped his arms around the back of Robb’s head and whispered into his hair, “I know. I know you do.”

Theon had already taken off his jerkin and his boots before he laid down, but Robb pulled Theon’s undershirt out from his pants and over his head. Then another desperate kiss, Robb biting Theon’s bottom lip hard enough that Theon hissed and pulled hard on Robb’s hair.

“Come on,” Theon said, hoarse and low. “Clothes off.” He tugged at the laces of Robb’s jerkin while Robb reached down to do the same to Theon’s pants. He pushed aside Theon’s smallclothes and took his cock in hand, grinning as Theon shuddered and paused for a second in undressing Robb before starting again more desperate than before.

Theon scrambled off Robb’s lap to land on his back on the mattress, kicking off his pants and sliding up the bed to lean against the headboard. He was wearing Theon’s version of a come hither look, which was a knowing smirk. Usually, it made Robb want to kiss him until Theon couldn’t remember his own name, never mind how to make such an annoying expression. Today, it made him want to look long enough that he would never forget it so he could bring it to mind during the long, lonely months ahead.

It took no more than ten seconds for Theon to decide Robb was taking far too long and to tackle him to the bed and begin trying to wrench his pants off. Robb was laughing far too hard to put up any sort of resistance, even as Theon held up Robb’s pants like they were some great prize he’d won after a fierce battle.

It was a much better look on him than the smirk, really.

They were both naked now and Robb snatched the pants from Theon and threw them to the ground, then pinned Theon to the bed with the weight of his broader, heavier body. “I win,” he said, watching, delighted, as Theon laughed and laughed. “What do I get?”

“Same as always,” Theon said. “Anything you want.” He kissed him, hard and wanting with both arms wrapped around Robb’s back.

“Good,” Robb growled, low and deep. He kissed him, grabbed Theon’s leg and pulled it up and around Robb’s hip, settling between Theon’s spread thighs and pressing his cock up against Theon. He pulled away from the kiss and grinned so he could watch as Theon’s back arched, could listen properly as Theon groaned. He rolled his hips and Theon’s groan turned into a gasp, his fingernails digging in sharply with each move Robb made.

“Yes, yes,” Theon hissed. “Come on, more, move, come on.” Theon dug his heel roughly into the meat of Robb’s arse and Robb reached back, grabbed a hold of Theon’s ankle and placed it back on the bed as he settled back onto his heels. Theon’s fingernails had left scratches on the backs of his shoulders as they’d dug in to try and get him to stay. They stung pleasantly, probably would for a few days. So long as they hadn’t broken the skin, they’d be a nice reminder of this moment. If they had, they’d be an aggravating reminder of this moment as he tried to keep them clean and cursed Theon as he did it.

Theon tried to grab at Robb and pull him down again, his cock hard and him flushed all the way down to his nipples. He didn’t turn the unpleasant shade of red that Robb did—Theon’s dark hair made a lovely contrast, rather than making him look like someone whose face had been dipped in a container full of beetroot juice—and every time he watched arousal turn Theon a beautiful shade of pink, he was entranced all over again. “No,” Theon whined. “Come back.”

Robb leaned over the edge of the bed and rummaged around in his pack, coming back with a vial of oil. He’d once thought that only Maester Luwin smirked and looked knowing when he handed over such things, but it turned out to be typical of all maesters, everywhere. He’d had to get more oil at Riverrun and twice while they were on campaign and each time the maester would seem to be only seconds away from making a bawdy joke. Robb had yet to stay long enough to find out if said joke would ever eventuate.

He held up the vial of oil and Theon laughed. “You’ll have to be gentle,” he said, as he shifted over onto his hands and knees. “Nobody wants to spend the next day on a horse when you’re sore and everybody knows why.”

That had happened to Theon more than once while they were on campaign. It was why Robb was always the one sent to the maester—Theon firmly believed he’d suffered enough teasing and knowing looks for a lifetime and didn’t need any more.

He ran a hand down the curve of Theon’s spine, smiling as Theon pressed up towards him. He removed his hand and oiled up three of his fingers on his right hand, putting the vial of oil on the bedside table. It didn’t take long to stretch Theon enough to fit three fingers, a constant stream of moans and demands to hurry up no less enjoyable now than they had been the first time.

When Robb pushed inside, Theon clutched at the bedding under him, pushing back and squirming in a way that always had Robb needing to pause, to catch his breath and try to regain some kind of control.

He pulled out and slammed back inside Theon, harder than he should have if Theon wanted to comfortably ride a horse in the morning. Theon didn’t complain, just said, “Yes, yes, again, Robb, yes.” Robb wrapped an arm around Theon’s waist and pulled him upright, his back pressing against Robb’s chest. He wrapped his other hand around Theon’s chin and pushed it back, so Robb could bury his mouth where Theon’s neck met his shoulder. There were already a series of fading love bites up his neck and down his shoulder and Robb bit down on one that was almost faded, sucking until the bruise was back to being dark and beautiful before he moved on to the next one.

Theon moaned and squirmed, trying to fuck himself on Robb’s cock and press his neck more firmly into Robb’s mouth. “Fuck me, fuck me,” Theon moaned. “Oh please, please.”

Robb pulled away from sucking bruises into Theon’s neck and rolled his hips, laughing softly as Theon let out a low moan. “Don’t you like my cock inside you, just resting inside you like that’s where it belongs? Don’t you like walking around with my marks on your neck?” He let go of Theon’s chin and wrapped his hand around Theon’s cock, tightening his other arm where it rested around Theon’s waist when he tried to fuck into Robb’s fist. “Don’t you like everyone knowing you’re mine? I do.”

“I do, I do,” he gasped. “I like all those things. I just like being fucked more.” He laughed, a happy, breathless sound that made something inside Robb’s clench pleasantly. Had Theon forgotten he was leaving in the morning? Robb hoped so, hoped he’d managed to help Theon find some kind of solace before—

Robb wasn’t going to think about that, not now, now while he was still inside Theon, still had Theon with him and not far away. 

So he clutched Theon to him and fucked him gently, letting the motion of his hips push Theon’s cock into his fist until Theon came, groaning and cursing. Theon collapsed down onto the bed, his forehead resting in the palms of his hands. He let out a satisfied little sigh and said, “Go on then.”

Robb’s movements became hard and fast, fucking into his pliant lover until he came. Theon liked to be fucked after he’d come, liked the feeling too-much-not-enough that ran through him.

He washed his hands and then grabbed a wet wash cloth, wiping it first over the sweat on Theon’s face and back and then where Robb’s come was leaking out of him. Theon let out little quiet happy noises every so often as Robb did it, something that brought a smile to Robb’s lips every time he heard them. He threw the cloth in a bowl of water on a nearby table and crawled into bed beside Theon, pulling the fur’s over the both of them.

Grey Wind came back inside the tent, putting his chin on the bed and letting out a quiet whine. Theon reached out and gave the dire wolf a scratch and then long, gentle strokes down his head and around to his neck and then back again.

“Don’t encourage him,” Robb grumbled.

“Are you talking to me or him?” Theon asked.

“Both, I suppose.”

 

He helped Theon up onto the horse the next morning, the shackles hampering the other man from managing it easily. Robb supposed that was the point, but he was irrationally irritated about it anyway. Why should Theon have to suffer the indignity of needing help to get on a horse? Robb had kissed him goodbye in the tent, but he wanted to do so again now and the bitterness of not being able to do so rose in him. He squished it down to where he kept his grief for his father and terror for his sisters and worry for his brothers and every other fucking thing he didn’t have time for, every man he hadn’t been able to save.

 _Everybody knows,_ Robb thought, wanting to at least reach up and cup that beloved face in the palm of his hand. It shouldn’t matter, and yet it did.

The Smalljon mounted his horse beside them and said, “Ready to leave, Your Grace.”

“You have the letter?” Robb asked, running a hand up and down Theon’s thigh.

“Yes, Your Grace.” The Smalljon sounded more amused than anything else and if Robb looked around he knew the Smalljon wouldn’t be the only one.

“The shackles become somewhat pointless if you hover like a mother with a newborn babe,” Theon said.

The Smalljon laughed.

“You’re all lucky I’m not the sort of king who would have you whipped for such insolence,” Robb said, which just made the Smalljon laugh harder and Theon roll his eyes.

“Keep him safe,” he told the Smalljon, moments before they were to leave.

The Smalljon nodded, face settling into a stern look that ill suited him. “I will, Your Grace. I know what he is to you.”

It was a statement he’d heard said so often, usually as a rebuke, but never before had it been such a comfort. “Thank you,” he said, and watched them until they disappeared from sight.  
 

 

Theon hadn’t expected to be escorted to the rooms he’d shared with Robb when they’d last been at Riverrun. It was the same grand, comfortable bedroom and sizable sitting room, the only difference being the men who stood outside the doors were not there to protect Robb, but to ensure Theon didn’t—Theon actually wasn’t sure what it was that he wasn’t supposed to do. If he wanted to go somewhere—the library or the dining hall or to shoot some arrows in the practise yard—he was allowed to go. The guards just went with him.

He supposed it was to ensure he didn’t leave Riverrun, though where he’d go if he tried wasn’t a question he had an answer for.

Edmure Tully chatted with him happily enough, though every day he dreaded hearing that Lady Stark had returned. Catelyn didn’t approve of him and that was never going to change. She’d never gone further in her cruelty than trying to seperate he and Robb, which, sitting alone and isolated in Riverrun, seemed more than far enough. He’d so wanted her approval once, her love, but even then he’d known it to be a futile hope. Better to wish the sea would come to Winterfell—at least there was no tricking himself into believing that might happen. He and Jon Snow had always seemed to be her least favourite people in all the world. In more recent years, Theon had supplanted Jon entirely, the bastard being almost entirely beneath her notice. The man her son might unwisely choose to marry was a far more immediate problem than her husband’s bastard boy, particularly after Jon announced his intention to take the black.

Mostly, he stayed in his rooms and stared at the ceiling, eating with Edmure when he was asked and working his way through the books that the maester gave him when he’d asked him for the least boring books that he had. He napped a lot, trying to forget that out there in the Westerlands, Robb was fighting a war. Was perhaps wounded, or dying, or dead already.

Then Edmure was proclaiming that he was going to call the banners to stop Tywin Lannister from crossing the Red Fork of the Trident. “I don’t...think that’s a good idea,” Theon said, standing in Edmure’s solar. Honestly, if Robb had managed to draw Tywin Lannister into the Westerlands, Theon imagined he’d be singing his joy aloud for all the world to hear.

“What?”

“Robb—the king—doesn’t have the forces that would be needed to take Lannisport or Casterly Rock, but if Tywin Lannister fails to defeat His Grace in the Westerlands that won’t matter. Let Tywin try to fight His Grace there. I don’t think he’ll win and, if he does, we’ll deal with it _then_. Call the banners _then_.”

“I—you think I shouldn’t call the banners? That I should just...let Lord Tywin march across the Trident?” He didn’t appear pleased by the idea, and Theon couldn’t blame him. Edmure Tully wasn’t thought of particularly highly by anyone, most significantly by himself. Theon wasn’t the only one to hear that Edmure was going to call the banners and to roll it back now would be admitting to a mistake.

“Yes. If His Grace needs help, he’ll send for it. I realise it might take a little while later on, but it’s better than taking your bannermen and smallfolk away from their homes when winter is coming. It was a long summer and a long summer could mean a longer winter. If Robb needs you, he’ll send for you, I promise you that.”

Edmure watched him silently, his face drawn with anxiety and doubt. It must surely have been an age before Edmure finally nodded, slow and solemn.

He’d been at Riverrun almost a month and a half when they got a raven from Winterfell. Lady Stark had been back from the Stormlands for a week and it’d been every bit as unpleasant as Theon had feared it would be. She watched him like she thought he was a man that needed watching, a man who would reveal himself if only given half a chance.

 _Dark wings, dark words,_ Theon had thought, sitting at the window in his rooms, watching the raven fly to the Maester’s tower. Perhaps it was nothing. A letter for Robb from his brothers, childish scribbles about direwolves and lessons.

Theon put his book away and walked to Edmure’s solar. Lady Stark tried to banish him from the room when the Maester came with the letter, but Edmure insisted he stay. “He has given me wise council,” Edmure said. “And the King speaks highly of him.”

Lady Brienne grasped the hilt of her sword tightly, the leather of her gloves squeaking loudly in the quiet room. She was taller and broader and stronger than Theon in every way and Theon avoided her company whenever he could. Her glare unnerved him. At that moment, the best he could do was avoid her gaze, pretend she looked at some man over his shoulder. He knew how to ignore unearned enmity better than most.

Somebody had attacked Winterfell, somebody whose men were well armed and well trained. They had been pushed back by Winterfell’s garrison, but Maester Luwin seemed certain they would return.

“Are they Ironborn?” Lady Stark demanded, and he shook his head.

“I don’t think so. Winterfell is landlocked, Lady Stark. My people have no interest in a place where they cannot reach the sea. Our whole lives are the sea. There would be no point to it and I’m not sure they’d be able to manage it if they tried.”

She doubted him, Lady Stark always doubted him, but she seemed to agree anyway. It was quickly decided—Theon would ride North with Lady Brienne and the men who had stayed to guard him at Riverrun to investigate further.

“Do this for Robb,” she told him moments before they were to leave. “Save his brothers and his home for this man you claim to love.”

He had claimed no such thing to her.

He glanced coldly down at her from atop his horse, then looked ahead of him, dismissing her entirely. “I need no reminder of who I love, Lady Stark.” _Only one amongst your family,_ he wanted to say. _If it wasn’t for him, I would spit on you._ It wasn’t true, but the thought soothed the sting of her words anyway.

She glared back at him, unrepentant. It was easy to forget that she had been born a fish these days. She was a direwolf far away from her children and sending a Kraken to protect them. Rickon was only six (perhaps seven now, Theon wasn’t sure, he’d always relied on others to remember such things) and Bran only ten and a cripple besides.

Almost all the young men in the North had marched South, who was left to protect them from this unknown enemy? Only old men, a handful of guards, a Kraken who had spent half his life marooned in the North, and a woman Lady Catelyn had only just met.

Lady Brienne had little to say as they rode north, past the Twins and around Moat Cailin. She watched him most closely around places held by his people, watched him closely even as he wrote to Lady Catelyn at Riverrun and to Ser Rodrik at Winterfell from Castle Cerwyn.

The guards didn’t seem to bother to watch him at all.

They left Castle Cerwyn a few hours before sunset, hoping to reach Winterfell unnoticed under the cover of darkness. It’s slower traveling at night, but they reach Winterfell in the very early hours of the morning and Ser Rodrik and Maester Luwin greet them solemnly in the yard, furs thrown on over their sleep clothes. Theon went to his bedchamber and slept until the sun hit his face through the window of his room.

He hadn’t slept here much in the past few years. He’d slept in Robb’s chambers as often as Lord and Lady Stark would allow it and, in the months before Lord Stark rode south with the King, that had been almost every night. It _was_ every night once Lord Stark rode south.

He supposed he should get used to this room again. When Robb returned to Winterfell, he would be a man wed and Theon would have to share him and not just with his bannermen and his people. What if Robb fell in love with his wife? What would Theon do then? He couldn’t bear to see that, to see this man he had lost everything for love someone else. He could go across the Narrow Sea, try his hand at being a sell sword. Could even try his luck returning to Pyke. Hells, maybe some family somewhere was desperate enough for prestige to marry a titleless man from one of the great houses of Westeros, even if that house was the Greyjoys of Pyke.

Here in Winterfell things seemed far less certain than they had in Robb’s tent in the Westerlands. Then, he’d stared into Robb’s face and known that Robb would love him forever, would love him until they both died. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Now it seemed foolish, nothing more than a child’s fancy.

It was almost midday when he dragged himself out of bed. He had only lingered in bed for a half hour and he told himself that was good, that he had rode a long way and slept little the night before, that he could linger a little if he liked.

He went to the kitchen and they gave him leftovers from breakfast and he ate standing and silent as they prepared lunch around him. As he left, he heard one kitchen wench say she had never known Lord Theon to be so quiet. “War does that to some men,” one of the older women said.

 _Maybe it was the war,_ he thought. Or maybe it was his father choosing to raid the North and leave his only living son’s life at the mercy of the people who had killed the ones already dead. Maybe it was Robb’s marriage hanging there in the future, changing everything. Maybe it was all those things, or none of them.

He walked quickly up the steps to the top of the Maester’s Tower, trying to get the blood moving and wake up his lethargic body. When he got there, Maester Luwin immediately made him turn back around and Lady Brienne, Bran and Ser Rodrik joined them in Lord Stark’s solar. Robb’s now, Theon thought, thrown for a moment by the very idea.

Others spoke about the men who had attacked Winterfell, but Theon said very little and what he did say was rather aggressively ignored by Bran. Ser Rodrik and Maester Luwin paid more attention, but not a great deal more. Lady Brienne listened rather too closely.

“Rickon should leave Winterfell,” he said, near the end of the discussion. “He should be taken somewhere, to White Harbor perhaps. Both heirs shouldn’t be in the same place, not with the situation so uncertain.”

Bran protested, loudly, but Lady Brienne agreed, though she asked Ser Rodrik and Maester Luwin if there wasn’t a better, more secure place than White Harbor for Rickon.

 

A letter had come from Riverrun while they had been travelling. It was written in Robb’s own hand and Theon ran his thumb over it, so familiar and so dear. A heaviness settled in his chest, even as he listened to Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik update them on the war. Robb had defeated Tywin Lannister in the Westerlands and the man himself had died during the battle; Stannis had taken King’s Landing and had proclaimed Cersei Lannister’s children bastards. Joffrey had been beheaded and Tommen sent into exile with his uncle and a group of Lannister men. At some point while Stannis besieged King’s Landing, Sansa had disappeared and her whereabouts were currently unknown. At that point in the letter, there was a splotch of ink, as though Robb had hesitated to continue his thought, not wanted to write it down, give it a voice of it’s own.

 _He thinks she’s dead,_ Theon thought, grief running through him for the girl he remembered, so proper and polite and gentle. What had the Lannister’s done to her? Had they murdered her and thrown her body in the bay? Or something worse? Robb loved Sansa so dearly and had been devastated by the guilt of not swapping the Kingslayer for her and Arya even before and now—would he ever recover? Theon doubted it. He would carry the wound of his sister’s death with him for the rest of his life, as his father had done before him. (And Arya, who was certainly dead, who nobody had heard anything about since before Ned Stark’s beheading—that wound would fester too.) Theon shied away from the grief of his own brother’s deaths even within the privacy of his own mind—it was so wrapped up in the memory of Robert Baratheon’s army taking Pyke, of the fire and the screaming and the dead piled on top of each other, of him looking even as Dagmar Cleftjaw bid him not to, searching the dead for his brother Maron, for one last glimpse of him.

Robb was, according to Ser Rodrik, still technically at war with the king on the Iron Throne; it was just now a different king sitting on said throne. _The situation in the North is more pressing,_ Robb wrote, _and once things are resolved here, we will travel North with all haste._ Resolving things for Robb meant marrying his Frey wife, an idea that made the heavy feeling in Theon’s chest sink into his stomach.

Perhaps it had already happened. Perhaps Robb was, right this second, already a man wed. He handed the letter back to Maester Luwin, with less reluctance than he’d expected. 

Robb was less his with every passing day and one day, perhaps soon, he wouldn’t be Theon’s at all. 

 

“Do you have any of the bodies of the men who died attacking Winterfell?” Theon asked Ser Rodrik, once the meeting was over.

Ser Rodrik nodded. “There were four. Come, they haven’t been buried yet. I thought someone might want to see them.”

“Am I so predictable?”

Rodrik laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Only in that it’s the prudent thing to do. I’m a little surprised that you asked though. ‘Prudent’ isn’t a word I’d typically use to describe you, Greyjoy.”

“No,” Theon agreed. “Not that.” A prudent man would’ve fallen in love with Jon Snow, a man who could’ve followed him to Pyke. A prudent man wouldn’t have fallen in love while he was a hostage at all.

Even the thought of being the sort of man who fell in love with Jon Snow made him want to laugh. What sort of person looked at that sullen face and wanted anything other than for him to just go away?

Only one of the men seemed familiar and it wasn’t a face he could place, not after two weeks laying in a Winterfell dungeon. It could have been worse—it was so cold that they hadn’t truly begun to stink yet and they were at least still recognisably people. If war had taught him anything, it was that at some point a decomposing body ceased to look like a person. (They ceased to smell like a person long before that.)

“Were they Northmen?” he asked Rodrik. They looked Northern, certainly, dark haired and pale faced, but they’d been stripped of armor and weapons before the other men had retreated.

“We think so, but we can’t be sure.”

Theon was silent, staring at the bodies for a long time. “Do you think they’re opportunists, looking for easy gold in the middle of a war?”

“Maybe.” Ser Rodrik didn’t sound convinced. “Though there is easier gold to be found than that at Winterfell.”

“You think there’s a turncloak amongst Robb’s bannermen.”

“I do,” Ser Rodrik said, solemn.

“Have you sent him a raven?”

“I have. I also sent one to Lord Manderly. Wyman Manderly was who Lord Stark trusted with such things.”

Theon wasn’t sure he would trust Ned Stark’s opinion about ‘such things’, but the man was dead and it seemed cruel and unwise to say such a thing, so he said nothing. He was worthless now, not even a hostage worth keeping alive to ensure his father’s good behaviour.

He supposed now was the time to learn to be prudent.  

One of the Reed children—the boy—approached him after, expression severe and pained. “When you go to White Harbor,” he said. “Stay there until the King comes for you. It will cost you in blood and flesh if you don’t.”

Disturbed, he avoided both the Reed children afterwards. Such a strange thing to say, and such a strange way to say it. Yet he’d seen the truth of it in the boys eyes and hadn’t questioned how he could know such a thing.

Blood and flesh. Alone in his bedchamber, he wrapped his arms around himself and shivered from something other than cold.

He and Lady Brienne left Winterfell a few hours before dawn, Theon holding Rickon tightly in front of him as they rode hard to Castle Cerwyn. The guards who had come north with them had been left behind to supplement the weakened Winterfell garrison. At Castle Cerwyn, they exchange their tired horses for fresh ones and then followed the White Knife down to White Harbor. Shaggydog ran along beside them for much of the journey, sometimes veering off and returning with a bloodied snout. _You can’t tell tell human blood from animal just from looking,_ Theon told himself. _So don’t wonder. There’s no point._

The journey wasn’t long, not really. There was only the three of them on two horses and Rickon was quiet most of the time. Perhaps the siege, short as it had been, had shaken him. Perhaps Shaggydog’s freedom was as good as his own. It had seemed that way for Robb sometimes, he and Grey Wind two parts of a whole, Robb as like a wolf as Grey Wind was like a man. (Theon had spent enough time with Grey Wind to know that rendered them more alike than Robb would ever admit.)

The closer they got to White Harbor, the saltier the air got. _We have to be close to the Narrow Sea,_ he thought. _It wouldn’t smell like this otherwise._ It was over the next hill that they could finally see White Harbor in the distance, and the sea beyond it.

The sea.

It had been so long. He had last seen the sea when he stepped off the ship from Pyke, Lord Stark severe and terrifying at his back and Winterfell somewhere in his future. If he’d known what was to come, would he have been more scared? Less?

He would have been baffled by the idea of half his life going by without seeing the sea. Like everyone on the Iron Islands, he had lived his life with the sea as a constant companion. It was cold and capricious and very rarely kind, but it was constant. It was only when Rickon tugged on his arm that he realised he’d stopped riding and had just been sitting and staring out at the view stretching out before them. “Is that the sea?” Rickon asked.

Theon nodded. “Yes. Can you smell it? The salt?”

Rickon took a deep breath in through his nose and said, “Yes. It smells nice.”

“It does.” Tears tried to creep up his throat, but he swallowed them down and blinked hard. “It smells like my home.”

Rickon shook his head. “Winterfell is your home,” he said stubbornly. “When Robb gets home, we’ll have a big feast and you’ll get married and you’ll be his prince.”

He smiled and rubbed a hand up and down Rickon’s chest. “Robb’s going to marry a Frey, Rickon, if he hasn’t already, and she’ll give him children. I might be able to return to Pyke someday, or maybe not. If Robb wants me to stay in Winterfell, I will.”

“No, he’s going to marry you, like in the songs.”

Theon shook his head and smiled. Lady Brienne had turned around and rode back towards them, her expression thunderous. “Why have you stopped?” she demanded.

“I haven’t seen the sea before,” Rickon said. “We were just looking.”

“Hmm,” she said, disapproving. “We have to get to White Harbor. You can look when we get there.”

“Of course,” Theon said, and kicked his horse back into motion.

Lord Manderly greeted them with such severeness that Theon worried what had happened during those days they had travelled from Winterfell. It had seemed so quick a journey, what could possibly have happened in a few short days?

But Winterfell had fallen and been put to the torch. No one knew where Bran or the Reed children were, only that it seemed they hadn’t been in Winterfell when it happened. According to a raven from Castle Cerwyn, there were no survivors to be found in Winterfell or Wintertown. Ser Rodrik and Maester Luwin had been among the dead, though many others hadn’t.

He and Lady Brienne attempted to saddle their horses while Rickon and Shaggydog got underfoot, Rickon screaming that they weren’t allowed to leave without him and Shaggydog howling so loudly it seemed to echo inside Theon’s head. Shaggydog only left them after one of the Manderly guards picked up Rickon and took him, kicking and screaming, inside.

A group of Manderly men would be following them a few days later. The raven had come in the night and it was late morning now, not enough time for a large group to go with them. Brienne had said she would go alone, but Theon had insisted that he knew the land and Winterfell better and would go with her and Theon wasn’t certain that hadn’t been her intention all along.

It was only as they rode through the city that he remembered the Reed boys warning not to leave White Harbor until Robb came for him. It will cost you in blood and flesh, he’d said.

Surely that was the way of war though? Everybody lost things in war and he hadn’t said it would cost Theon his life. And Bran was just a boy, a crippled boy, out there with two children who had never known war and Gods knew who else.

When they got to Winterfell, he began by dragging anyone he didn’t recognise into the courtyard. He then stripped off armour that hadn’t already been pilfered. There were a dozen men in the pile. Nine had shirts beneath their armour of rough oiled leather that was so old it had cracked. The shirts were those worn by the household guard of the Dreadfort, embroidered with the Bolton’s sigil of the flayed man on the breast.

“Is that a man on their shirts?” Lady Brienne asked.

“A flayed man,” he said. “The sigil of House Bolton, they’re a house in the North to the east of here based out of the Dreadfort. And yes, they are cheery people. Flayed men. Dreadfort. It’s like they want people to look at them first when things start becoming treacherous.”

There was a long moment of silence and then Lady Brienne said, “Yes.”

He crouched by the bodies with Lady Brienne hovering above him. “It isn’t enough to be sure,” he said.

“No,” she agreed.

“But it is something.”

“Yes.”

“It could be misdirection, or coincidence.”

“The men from Castle Cerwyn buried some of the dead, yes?”

“Maester Luwin, Ser Rodrik. The ones they knew, I suppose.” Most of the servants had been dragged out of Winterfell itself and left to rot. He looked up at her and said, “Bran and the Reed children are still out there. Somebody needs to try and find a trail and somebody else needs to take the shirts to Castle Cerwyn or White Harbor to send a raven. Robb needs to know to suspect something at least.”

“His Grace.”

“Excuse me?”

“You keep referring to the king by his name. It isn’t appropriate. _His Grace_ needs to know to suspect.”

He supposed it was strange that more people didn’t call him on it. Since Robb became king, Lady Stark tended to twitch when he called Robb by name and not title, but it seemed to barely warrant a reaction from anyone else.

Everybody knew what he was to Robb. Everybody knew he was...something. Mostly, people just claimed that they knew what he was to Robb, which was more than Theon could say since he had left for Riverrun all those months ago. Once, he would have said Robb was a man he loved, and that when they were both men truly, Theon would marry a woman who could produce an heir and Robb would do the same.

He didn’t need an heir anymore. His sister or one of his uncles would inherit when his father died. Perhaps his father hadn’t officially disinherited him, but it was the laws of the greenlanders that required that. The Iron Islanders would never accept being ruled over by a man they knew nothing of, whose deeds they hadn’t witnessed for themselves, and he would never be permitted to return to the islands before his father died.

Now, when Robb married Theon would be his—his whore, he supposed. His mistress. The man Robb would marry quietly if he outlived his wife after his children were grown.

“Yes,” he said, after a long silence. “His Grace needs to know to suspect.” He stood. “You should go to Castle Cerwyn. I know the surrounding area, I’ll have a better idea of what to look for.”

She glared at him. Once, he would’ve insisted that when a woman glared at a person they could at least not fear physical harm. That was no longer true. He was halfway certain that she was going to tie him up and leave him in one of Winterfell’s more intact buildings until she got back. He was absolutely certain that he wouldn’t be able to stop her if she decided to do exactly that.

It was a strange feeling.

“Return to Winterfell in the evening. I will be no longer than a day returning from Castle Cerwyn.”

“I think perhaps going on to meet up with the men from White Harbor—”

“ _I will return in no more than a day from Castle Cerwyn._ ”

He sighed. “Fine.” There was no use arguing with her. Whatever Lady Stark had said to her, she had clearly taken it, perhaps, too literally—or perhaps precisely as literally as Lady Stark had intended her to.

It was to the east of Winterfell that a group of men on horseback set upon him, an ugly, leering man with eery pale blue eyes leading them. He smiled and said, “Well, well. If it isn’t Theon Greyjoy, the King in the North’s whore.”

He was already holding his bow in his hands and he drew an arrow from his quiver. “Who? I think you’re—” He knew how unconvincing he was even as the Bastard of Bolton—for he had little doubt that was who this man was—interrupted him with a sneer.

“Everyone knows you, Greyjoy.”

He felled two of the men and one of the horses before he had to discard his bow and draw his sword. He took another man down with him, gagging at the man’s horrendous, overwhelming smell, before one of the men wrestled him to the ground, punching him several times in the face until everything went dark.

He sat in the dungeon of the Dreadfort. They’d taken his boots and his furs when they’d dumped him in here. Ramsay Snow had stood in a corner watching while they did so, unable to take his eyes off Theon while they manhandled him. He’d heard what Snow had done to Donella Hornwood, that he had married her and then locked her in a tower to starve to death. That when they found her, they discovered that she had tried to eat her own fingers in her desperation.

He wondered if that was in his future. He had been down here for several days now and they hadn’t feed him. A woman had come and given him some tiny amount of water, dripping it into his mouth from a flask, but that seemed so impossibly long ago now. He had never thought about food or water so much in his life. Had he once scoffed at the idea of drinking anything but the finest of wine?

What a fool he had been.

He was sitting in his own filth, the chain too short to relieve himself with any dignity or cleanliness. It was shameful to admit, but he’d cried the first time he’d had to do that after holding it for so long it was painful.

It would be horrible to be found like this, even if he were dead. It seemed too optimistic to imagine he would be found alive.

Yet when Ramsay Snow appeared at the entrance to the dungeon, a shiver still ran through him. It couldn’t be worse than to be here alone in his own head, sitting in his own filth with nothing to eat or drink.

It turned out he was wrong.

Ramsay had taken the middle finger on his right hand and he’d been moved to a different cell in the dungeons than usual. It was far cleaner than the usual one and Ramsay had left him a bucket.

It wasn’t kindness. Kindness would have been to let infection set in and kill him. Kindness wasn’t taking a finger that meant if he ever wanted to shot an arrow again he’d have to learn to pull the bow with his left hand and hold it with his right. Kindness wasn’t waiting until he’d begged for the finger to be taken, because the pain had been so unbearable.

“What’s your name?” Ramsay liked to say. “Tell me.” Theon wondered how long it would be before he gave in, before the pain became too much and the consequences of silence became too much for him to bear.

How long had he been here? He didn’t know. There were no windows in the dungeons and food wasn’t given to him often enough to guess at the days. Even in the clean cell, food wasn’t regular. It seemed as though there were three meals one day, a single meal another, none at all other days.

He was moved back to his original cell and the bucket was left where it was. He missed the bucket, even more than he missed the more regular food.

He’d learned to ignore so much that it took a long time for him to realise that the few sounds that managed to reach him so far underneath the Dreadfort were those of a battle. Could it be Robb? Had it been so long? Perhaps it was Lord Manderly. Did White Harbor have enough troops still in the North to besiege a castle? Had Lady Brienne ever managed to reach Castle Cerwyn? Did anybody know enough to have deduced what had happened at Winterfell, what was happening at the Dreadfort?

He let himself imagine that it was Robb, come to rescue him from the Bastard of Bolton, from this man who hunted down women to kill them slowly, who had taken one finger and whispered that he would take more, who had been removing as much skin as possible from his chest and his back.

It was a pleasant fantasy, but the reality would be otherwise. He didn’t want Robb to see him like this. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. Better to die here than to be found like this.

There was so little of him left, but it seemed he still had some small amount of pride.

He heard a familiar sound on the steps outside the dungeon. It was distinctive. It made him smile, though maybe it shouldn’t have.

It was a canine’s paws on stone steps. He told himself they were too heavy to be one of Ramsay’s dogs.

It was only when he heard a voice say, “Grey Wind, where are you taking me?” that he truly believed it.

 _No,_ he thought. _No, no._

Grey Wind appeared first, Robb only seconds behind. Robb stood in the entrance to the cell and then, after Grey Wind padded inside, followed and stood over Theon, frowning.

 _No. No, no._ It was precisely as he’d feared.

He'd tried so hard to lock away inside himself the parts of him that existed simply because he loved Robb and was loved by him in return. He hadn't wanted Ramsay to see them, because Ramsay would have wanted to break them into tiny pieces that couldn't be put back together again. So long as that part of him was salvageable, he’d had hope and that had been enough.

What would it matter though, if he'd become so unrecognisable that even Robb couldn't look at him and see something of who he had been before?

He turned his head away and closed his eyes and then a cold, canine nose nudged at his arm. Reaching out blindly, he patted Grey Wind with his good hand, clutching at that familiar fur.

“Theon?” Robb whispered and turned away almost immediately, yelling for someone to remove the chains from the prisoner. Theon flinched away when Robb reached out with a trembling hand. Grey Wind crawled closer, dragging his belly along the floor, and pressed his nose against Theon’s leg and licked.

Theon reached out and Robb took his maimed hand gently, holding it in both his hands so tenderly it almost moved Theon to tears. When was the last time he experienced anything but a cruel touch? “I’m sorry,” Theon whispered, for flinching away, for the smell, for the filth that was getting into Grey Wind’s fur, for everything.

“No,” Robb said. “I’m sorry. I should have come sooner.” Robb ducked his head. His breath hitched and then he said, his voice thick with held back tears, “I thought you were dead. We all did. If I’d known—”

Theon shook his head. “No. No. How could you have known?”

Robb pushed himself in closer and, when Theon didn’t flinch away, came closer still, resting his forehead against Theon’s.

“The filth,” Theon protested, voice breaking.

Robb was already shaking his head before Theon had even finished speaking. “I don’t care. I love you. I love you.” He said I love you the first time as reason, the second time as oath.

They sat there together until the squire returned with the Smalljon and a guard held at sword point. The man’s hands were shaking as he undid the cuffs.

After Theon had been released, Robb reached down and picked Theon up, one arm under his knees and one under his shoulder blades. Theon swallowed a scream as his shirt rubbed against what was left of the skin on his back. Even so, he wrapped his arms around Robb’s neck and held onto him as tightly as he could.

“Send for a maester and have a bath drawn upstairs,” Robb said, his squire scrambling ahead to ensure he got there before Robb.

Robb ducked his head down so he could murmur quietly to Theon, “Everything’s going to be alright. I’m going to make it alright.”

Theon rested his head on Robb’s shoulder and decided to believe him.  

**Author's Note:**

> So there's a short description of Ramsay taking one of Theon's fingers and vague descriptions of other torture, including flaying of Theon's back and some reference to Ramsay attempting to force Theon into being Reek but it's way less explicit than the book and the show and it's also pretty short. Theon is tortured for much less time than he is in canon, so the Reek stuff hasn't happened yet and also his experience getting there doesn't involve his entire life being blown up, just, you know. Parts of it. So it's a different experience. Anything else people think should be added, feel free to drop me a comment and I'll do that. 
> 
> I'm also [togglemaps](http://togglemaps.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr, so feel free to send me an ask there if that's easier for you.


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